https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-01-21

There's a lot to unpack, so here's just a starter:

- Birgi, Toralf and Kolvori are children of Alrund and Cosima.

- Cosima was originally a dolphin

- Birgi hires dwarves to keep tabs on her brother and steal his credit

- Halvar was adopted

- Valki, while selfish, was originally just a prankster. Tibalt acting as him is actually malicious, which I think is a good nod to the disconnect between Loki in earlier parts of the Eddas and his role in Ragnarok.

pretty rude of the article to call Svella a monster

Even just blurbs I really enjoy these. Makes playing with some of these cooler if I have some sense of lore like Vega.

Really appreciate that they are doing these blurbs, it helps to make the set come alive. Magda is pretty awesome, although the part with the dragon eggs is a bit too close to And Peace Shall Sleep. The gods still don't do much for me, and most of them are just kinda weird.

I have a nitpicky thing: I think it is weird the showcase cards have arts depicting characters with markedly different appearances. For example, Magda has different hair and Tergrim's lantern is different. I assume the base art is the canonically accurate one but weird, right?

Like these are not just stylistically different depictions; details are different in literal detail.

Yeah, I've noticed that, too, some of those could be completely different characters. I try to stay clear of the showcase versions anyway because I like my Magic cards to look like actual Magic cards, so personally, I don't really care what they look like.

The showcase are meant to be a little on the comic book aesthetic. I don't think they're canon, at least not anymore than Ikoria's alternate card art is.

I feel the same way, people joke about how different faced characters can look between card but you still get that good cosplay sense of who they are suppose to be when you see them. A few of these don't quiet have that, I think they let artist have more creative freedom but I personally would like legends things in arts look closer.

For Birgi I thought about rationalizing it as one being her disguise among humans and the other one being the actual depiction, but that's probably assuming too much. I guess they're in-universe fan art.